were also slow to disappear. Some of them could still be documented in nine-
teenth-century Latvia.^46
TheSlavs were converted much earlier, in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Again most of the earliest evidence for their native religion and beliefs comes
from outsiders’ reports. By way of poetic tradition there is an obscure and
peculiar Russian epic from 1185–6, the Lay of Igor, besides the oral heroic
verse represented by the Russian byliny and the much ampler products of the
Serbo-Croat bards. The folklore of the Slavonic peoples is a further source of
material.^47
Albania has its own poetry and folklore, though it is doubtful how far they
can be regarded as representative of a distinct branch of Indo-European
tradition, since they are not clearly separated from those of neighbouring
lands. The oral epics parallel those of the South Slavs and are in some cases
composed by bilingual poets, while the folk-tales often resemble those found
in Greece. There remains nevertheless a residue of national mythology.^48
CONSIDERATIONS OF METHODMany who have written on Indo-European poetics, mythology, and religion
have tended to proceed in a rather naive way, ignoring historical and geo-
graphical coordinates. As soon as they find a parallel between two individual
traditions, say between Greek and Indian myth, they at once claim it as a
reflex of ‘Indo-European’, without regard either to the groupings of the
Indo-European dialects or to the possibilities of horizontal transmission.
Greater sophistication is needed.^49
In the light of the earlier discussion it will be seen that application of the
comparative method can take us back to different levels of antiquity, depend-
ing on the location of the material compared. Schematically:
(^46) The fullest collection of the external sources was made by Wilhelm Mannhardt and
published posthumously under the title of Letto-Preussische Götterlehre (Riga 1936); cf. also
Clemen (1936), 92–114. For the songs cf. Rhesa (1825); K. Barons, Latvju dain ̧as (1894–1915,
2nd edn. 1922; 8 volumes) (LD), from which 1,219 stanzas with variants are edited and trans-
lated in Jonval (1929); folk-tales etc. in Schleicher (1857). The evidence for the Lithuanian
pantheon is laid out by Usener (1896), 79–119, with the help of Felix Solmsen. See also
Mannhardt (1936); Gimbutas (1963), 179–204; Biezais–Balys (1973); H. Biezais, Baltische
Religion (Stuttgart 1975); Greimas (1992); P. U. Dini and N. Mikhailov, Mitologia baltica (Pisa
1995).
(^47) C. H. Meyer (1931) collects sources in non-Slavonic languages. See further Unbegaun
(1948); Gimbutas (1971), 151–70; N. Reiter, ‘Mythologie der alten Slaven’, in Wb. d. Myth. i(2).
165–208; Vánˇa (1992) (survey of literary sources: pp. 29–34).
(^48) Lambertz (1973). (^49) Cf. Meid (1978), 6 f.
Introduction 19